KG: "fair-weathered" beats bigoted any day
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KG: "fair-weathered" beats bigoted any day
John Mitchell, Inquirer Staff Writer
So, Kevin Garnett has decided that he wanted to boost the collective psyche of those wannabe fans in Boston, endearing himself to them by calling the fans of the City of Brotherly Love “fair-weathered.”
“Take that how you want,” Garnett added.
You think we’re the fair weather type, do you? Ok, to that I say that it’s better to be fair weather than to be anything remotely akin the cretins that unleashed their racist vitriol via Twitter upon Washington Capitals defenseman Joel Ward, a Black hockey player, last month after he eliminated Boston’s Bruins from the NHL playoffs with an overtime goal.
Can’t really call this an isolated incident, my friend, not unless you believe that those clowns were gathered together in some sort of Bruins/Skinheads gathering and, after their team went down, they all took to Twitter once Ward drove the stake through Boston’s heart.
No, this wasn’t the whole Boston fan base, not at all. But it’s not a coincidence that Bill Russell, the biggest sports winner in the history of Boston sports, absolutely loathed the city and a fan base that he saw as racist.
His words, not mine.
So my advice to you, KG, is that you’re better off winning this series, the next one and then the next. Because if you let those stalwart fans down, who knows what they’ll unleash on you. We do know what they are capable of.
Take that how you want.
Comments (69)
"Great" article John but the Celtics are not the Bruins or the Red Sox and in fact have been at the forefront of breaking important race barriers throughout their history. Three questions you should have known the answer to before you wrote this article:
1. Which team had he first all Black starting five in NBA history?
2. Which NBA team had the first Black coach?
3. Which NBA team had the first Black superstar in the NBA?
— Celticsfan- John, you have been writing for the post for 6 months, KG has been in the NBA for 18 years. You came from covering the Wizards. Stop trying to become the guy who wrote the article that sparked the team.
Boston fans were not the ones with the Ward comments after the NHL series, that was a group of HOCKEY fans. People who watch hockey took the comments entirely too far, mostly Canadians.
Your 15 seconds of fame are up.— 4SportBoston - What KG said about your fans is completely true... are you forgetting or simply ignoring the history of sports fans from your city? There is a reason so many sports reporters and writers across the country say that Philly fans are THE WORST in the US...Did you forget about booing Santa Claus? Did you forget about throwing ice chunks at an opposing team? Did you forget about cheering when an opposing player gets hurt? (several times btw...in fact i heard it as recently as when Noah went down in the last playoff series) Ill give you a term for Philly fans....CLASSLESS...and to confirm what KG said... wasnt it YOUR fans that booed the Sixers out of the building when they were down at the half in the last home game? Take your shot all you want at Boston fans...Philly fans are THE ABSOLUTE WORST ....— bigshow2569
- This coming from the town where 2 drunk bozos puked on a 12 year old girl at a baseball game.... Yup, reeks of class in Philly.... Oh and on the racist front there John, why don't you ask your city of Brotherly Love how it treated Jackie Robinson in 1947? I'm sure you wouldn't assign that behavior to the modern Philadelphia would you? So now you assign Bill Russell's comments from 40+ years ago to modern day Boston and use 12 morons on twitter, almost none from the Boston area to paint the city as racist. Buy a clue my friend. Using your logic, I will paint the entire city of Philadelphia as complete drunken imbeciles who assault 12 year old girls at sporting events. Congratulations.... Boston wins... again. But hey, at least you guys can claim that you are still the only city with a court room in its football stadium....— Reggie_Lewis
- "His words, not mine"...Wait so you're a journalist right? So when you say "his words", it's pretty much assumed that a quote of some sort will precede or follow......John Mitchell, I've never read pieces by you before, but just from this one I can clearly tell that you take your fan-dom more seriously than your job. This is the most biased and misconstrued article I've ever read. Ever. I don't even need to correct your absurdly false statements, because everyone already has for me!.....But hey look at it this way, after everything's said and done, you may qualify as the 78th most famous John Mitchell still alive today. Congrats!— pqueen01
- Celticsfan, in your post did you think to review some history did you look up any questions on the teams you knocked from Boston? In the NHL the Bruins were the first to have a black player, Willie O'Ree in the late 50's. Just because they don't have any black players currently doesn't mean anything against them, the NHL just hasn't had a big number of black players over the years. Look across the NHL as a whole and guess what percent of players are black in the entire league, probably 25-30 active black players in the entire league right now and probably a similar number or closer to 40 retired that are no longer in the league.
There are a number of factors involved in the low number of players in the NHL I'm sure, but the Bruins haven't been reluctant to sign black players. Of the 40 or so players who have retired I know 8 played for the Bruins, so 20% or so of inactive players. This hardly seems like a racist history for the franchise, not many of the current active players have played for the Bruins if any, but who knows for what reason that is.— HoldenQ - Bill Russell was right in 1959 and even in 1969 when he retired for the Celtics. Much has changed in Boston since I was 15 and the Celtics won championship #11. Bill Russell of the 50s and 60s, not much support for the racist argument in 2012.
I've lived in Boston and Philly, there are racists in both cities. And good fans in both. And bad fans in both.— I S GREENBERG - Bill Russell was right in 1959 and even in 1969 when he retired for the Celtics. Much has changed in Boston since I was 15 and the Celtics won championship #11. Bill Russell of the 50s and 60s, not much support for the racist argument in 2012. I've lived in Boston and Philly, there are racists in both cities. And good fans in both. And bad fans in both. (HTML deleted)— I S GREENBERG
- So - if we are going to bring up Bill Russell from the 60s, we gotta bring up Philly's own Dick Allen, too, right? Y'know the black player that had to wear a batting helmet in the field because Philly fans threw batteries at him?
It is irresponsible journalism at its highest to paint an entire fanbase as racist for incidents that happen 50 years ago while ignoring similar, if not worse, incidents in your own city.
Jeez - an opposing player notices empty seats and the hometown team being booed by their fans and says something about it - and you need to irresponsibly lash out painting an entire city as racist in response? What a tool.— jrboston - Fact #1: Celtics one of three teams to integrate the NBA in 1950.
Fact #2: Celtics name Bill Russell first African-American head coach in NBA.
Fact #3: Four African-Americans have coached an NBA team to a championship. Three of them were coaching for the Celtics.
Fact #4: Anyone can call him/herself a Bruins fan, and then spout racist blather.
Fact #5: The Bruins went out of their way to distance themselves from the situation, Ward (that aggrieved party) said that many Bruins fans came to his defense, and the organization apologized, even though they had nothing to do with the racist Tweets.
Fact #6: John Mitchell doesn't know what he's talking about.— bidemytime - Generalizing populations based on twitter is like using Wikipedia as a trusted source. However, if you took more than 8 seconds to evaluate your "sources" you would've seen profile pictures on Twitter of Red Wings and Sabres logos specifically among the worst comments.
Your argument is so weak that you go back to the 60s to prove how racist a city is, but Civil Rights movements were isolated to Boston at that time, right?
Finally, about being "fair weather fans", would you pay $10 for product that is terrible and has little entertainment value, or would you rather spend $75-80 on a product that gives you exactly what you want? The post original Big 3 Celtics were awful, thats why tickets were 10 bucks. You couldn't have paid me $10 to go to those games.
I bet you still think the Pats owe you a Superbowl too.— mp1514 - So a black athlete from Boston says that the fans from Boston are better than the fans from Philly, and your response is to say that the Boston fans hate black athletes? This is typical racist drivel coming from a half-wit black writer because he has nothing else to defend his fan base with. "Fair-weathered beats bigoted anyday"? Boston fans are not bigoted...however, congratulations for outright stating that the Philly fans are fair-weathered. Philly fans...I don't think you're fair-weathered. I'm a hardcore Boston everything fan, and I can agree that all fans everywhere have their issues, but how do you all feel about this "writer", this voice of your sports, calling you all fair-weathered in agreement with KG?
You, sir, are a racist idiot.— Jalah413 - I think you are a bit late on this one. What's wrong you didn't get your cheap shot in when The Bruins lost to Washington?
You are being blatantly prejudice towards Bostonians. You have prejudged a whole city as bigoted based on the Twitter rants from a couple dozen losers across North America and assigned them all to Bostonians and by extension made the whole city responsible. Twitter isn't 100% anonymous and if you did any homework you'd find there were more tweets from Canada and NY than from the Boston area (3 of them were from the Boston Area). Was Boston fans who took to Twitter after Joel Ward committed a penalty, in the waning moments of game 5 vs the Rangers, that cost Washington the game? Or is Washington also bigoted because Twitter erupted in racist comments, aimed at Ward, after that game?
Before KG came to Boston he sought out former Celtic players to ask them what their opinion of the city was. He had heard the stories of Boston being racist he heard that Bill Russell called Boston a racist city and KG wasn't going to play in Boston if it was true. The consensus was that Boston is no different than anywhere else. Unfortunately racism exists everywhere even in The City of Brotherly Love.
So John you are just hurting race relations by perpetuating a stereotype of Bostonians. You are no better than the idiots on Twitter.
Boston in 6— **JG** - SO....
Yo call Boston a racist city because of comments Bill Russel made last century and because some anonymous people on the internet who could be from anywhere make a racist comment? That's pretty weak and exposes you as the racist. Here is a fact for you. The first Black man that played in the NHL played for the Boston Bruins. Boston and Philadelphia have the same problems with racism, and it's people like you that are a detriment to advancement.
Worse part of all this? You probably called Boston racist to get attention for yourself and to bump your twitter followers up from the measly 1000 you have. Way to propagate the hate at the expense of a nation.— Truth34 - First,as a sixers fan who lived in boston for years, I don't know if Boston fans are more or less racist than philly fans and concede that racism is still everywhere. there's no reason for john to write that dribble and for you celts fans who don't know, he's been writing garbage all year long and should have been fired in Feb!
However, towards your last point mp 1514, if you read my earlier statement, i'm not saying you should pay $10 for a product you won't enjoy. what i said was that kg calling us fair weather fans is a joke b/c every city is full of fair weather fans. he said boston had real fans but where were they when you guys stunk after the original big 3 left. he suggested that the celts have a real fan base b/c unlike the sixers, they're there win or lose and we both know that's not the case. if the measure of real fans is selling out a stadium when the product stinks than both teams are fair weather as is most of the cities around the country?
— 76ers in 2076
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About this blog
John Mitchell is in his second year covering the 76ers for the Inquirer after joining the paper in November 2011. He covered the Washington Wizards for the Washington Times from 1998 to 2008. He's also worked at the Philadelphia Tribune, the Wilmington News Journal, Courier-Post, Trenton Times and Elmira Star-Gazette.Born and raised in West Philadelphia - not too far from Will Smith - he graduated from Overbrook High School the same year the 76ers won their last championship. He's a proud graduate of Howard University and the proud father of two sons, Jared and Jordan.
ABOUT MARC NARDUCCI
Marc Narducci has served in a variety of roles with the Inquirer since beginning in 1983. He has covered the 76ers as a backup and a beat writer. In addition, Narducci has covered everything from the Super Bowl to the World Series and a lot in between. Narducci also has a true passion for South Jersey scholastic sports, which he has covered for many years.
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